The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) on Friday, 8 January, will conduct a second dry run for COVID-19 vaccination in all 700+ districts of all states and Union territories. The dry run is to test preparedness and to plug loopholes, if any.
As the country prepares for the COVID-19 vaccine roll out, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan will be visiting Tamil Nadu on Friday. During his visit, Vardhan will review the preparedness and oversee the dry run operations at the scheduled sites, IANS reported.
The Union Health Minister will visit the site at Government General Hospital, Chennai followed by the one at Government Omandurar Hospital, Chennai. In the afternoon, he will visit the private vaccination centre in Apollo Hospital, Chennai after a brief visit to the General Medical Store Depot (GMSD) in Periamedu.
The government had earlier announced that pan-India inoculation will begin once emergency-use authorisation was granted, and recently, Serum Institute of India and Oxford-AstraZeneca's Covishield as well as Bharat Biotech's Covaxin were approved.
The only two states who will not participate in the drill is Uttar Pradesh and Haryana which had dry runs on 5 and 7 January.
Dr Harsh Vardhan will brief the states on 7 January for the drive which will be supervised by the respective District Collector/District Magistrate.
Around 1.7 lakh vaccinators and 3 lakh vaccination team members have been trained on protocol at the mock inoculation site. The states have been equipped with the necessary cold chain infrastructure it would need to carry out the vaccination, including freezers and sufficient supply of syringes and other logistics, according to a press release by the Centre.
The Centre has shared ‘detailed guidelines’ with all States to carry out a smooth roll out and identify any 'residual challenges’ before the COVID-19 inoculation begins, to familiarise the administrators of the vaccine with the process, including bio-medical waste management, using the Co-WIN software, and prevention of infection practises, said the statement.
Co-WIN, short for Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network, is an application developed by the health ministry to get insight of vaccine stocks, storage and logistics details and tracking of vaccine beneficiaries, said the report.
Earlier, on 2 January, a dry run was organised in 125 districts across the country to check whether India was prepared to administer COVID-19 vaccine to nearly 30 crore people in the first priority group.
(With inputs from IANS.)
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